Roses Are Green!

Final Score of the 2014 Rose Bowl:

Michigan State      24
Stanford               20

Once again, the Spartan defense just progressively choked the life out of an opposing offense, becoming more impenetrable as the game wore on.  The offense made more mistakes (and more bizarre ones) than we've been used to (what were you thinking on that screen pass for the pick-six, Connor Cook?), but on the whole, they imposed their will on the Stanford 'D' more than the other way around.

I won't bore you with a recap of what I posted a couple weeks back; suffice it to say that my Spartans have earned their way back into consideration as one of the top football programs in the land.  As presently constituted, we aren't what we've been since the late 60s - an average program, occasionally good, which could produce wonderful moments, but stumble at least as often, and never rise to the level of 'elite'.  No, this is a damn good team, right now, and the wonderful moments are more the norm than the exception.  And I must say, we're loving it. . .

(I am recalling a conversation I had a couple years ago with some friends of mine from our sister school an hour down the road - Big Sister, if they insist - in which they all asserted that, what with Big Blue hiring a new coach, we Spartans would soon be relegated once more to our rightful position looking up at them, sighing wistfully, and wishing we could be like them.  At the time, I said, God bless coach Hoke and all, but I didn't think that Coach D and the Spartans were planning on going anywhere, and maybe they should get used to the idea of us being better than they'd like us to be.  It's fun to be proven right. . .)